iPhone SE (2020) vs Samsung A51 By Jon Rettinger

Io's and Android have been battling for years at that premium, price point and recently going above a thousand dollars, but that battle still wages really strong at the lower end. The entry-level iPhone packs the impressive, a 13 Bionic processor that could perform at levels better than pretty much any other flagship. This mid-range Samsung touts the beautiful design of galaxy s, 20 series for less than half the price, so OS preference aside for the same price, which one of these phones are gonna, give you the absolute most value for your money. This is a 20/20 I phone s, II versus the Samsung Galaxy a 51. So there's a lot to talk about with these phones, and we'll break them all down by categories, but I think we have to begin with price. So $400 for an entry-level iPhone is a huge deal.

Now you can decide for yourself the coroners Apple cut or worth it to you. When you combine the value and the processor inside, you are getting a very capable phone, so Samsung, on the other hand, has had phones competing at various price points for years, including that really top over $1000 all the way down to this $400 is price point. So this 851 line is nothing new. What is new and interesting is that these phones both came to the US within about two weeks of each other. Very rarely do we see phones, the same price point announced in the same market at the same time, so it made sense to naturally put these together now folks abroad about access to 851 for about three or four months, but here in the U.

S. it's offered on carriers, and it's bringing a lot to the package. Look at the 51 Samsung didn't cut that many corners in fact, you're getting a lot of flags. Your features in here you've got an N screen finger. / reader you've got a full HD AMOLED display you've got that single hole punch up at the top and even some things that flagship phones don't even have nowadays like ahead phone jack, are here, but it's not all perfect.

There are some notable emissions. Things like wireless charging aren't here as well, and the plastic body and the hands maybe doesn't feel as premium to some flagship counterparts. So I think the design of the iPhone SE is maybe a bit controversial and seems to be split to two camps. People that understand that Apple just reused, an iPhone 8 shell to keep cost Alan and those that wish Apple would have done something at least new or slightly different or tweaked for this year, but there's no denying the materials that go into this phone, make it at least feel premium. The combination of the aluminum and the glass feel perfect.

In the hand, this was a flagship phone just a few years ago. Now aesthetically, it might not look like a flagship anymore. You've got a 4.7-inch screen, which we will talk about. We've got big Mattie bezels on the top and bottom and, of course, a home button being there on the bottom, with touch ID, I'm, not sure what side of the fence you're going to fall on with the iPhone SE as far as looking and feeling premium. But it is a tried-and-true method, and this is sort of the last version of that design phone that has a physical home button.

So at the very least, it's the best version of that now older design language, so I still maintain that the reason a lot of people buy phones is for the camera, and you are getting very capable camera systems with both of these. If you put samples from both of these side-by-side the iPhone, it's kind of no surprise as a fantastic camera, and I'd even say it's almost the same level of still quality you get with the iPhone 11 Apple kind of continues to perfect the smart HDR, so I'll need fifty-one side and Samsung. Typically, two photos have to have a lot of contrast. The color is kind of pop right off at you. That's not the case here with the 51, and I think that's kind of a good thing.

Both phones are pretty similar side-by-side in good lighting, there's noticeably more contrast and sharpening than the SE, and sometimes the colors would shift a little cooler with the Samsung I think the versatility of the phone here is adds to its niceness. The ultra-wide is nice to have who I may not use it. All that often the macro shots might think it really close pictures all it off, and it's when I want to its kind of good to have that flexibility, even if the object was kind of hard to keep me focused on another area where maybe the whole story isn't told. Just on paper. You see the a51 has a night mode, whereas the iPhone SE does not have Apple's night mode.

So you would assume the edge would clearly go to Samsung here in like the night mode situations, though even where night mode was turned on, both phones performed pretty equally, and it is to say they equally bad. If I had to give an edge to one I'd, probably even say the SE could get better focus day, 51 really struggled even with that night mode, but both of these phones are almost useless in night mode of situations, so video is also another area. I think is becoming increasingly important. So on the iPhone SE, you can shoot 4k at 60 and 4k at 30 on the 851 and one thing to notice. A 51 does not support stabilization in 4k, a video on the iPhone SE looked great in pretty much every way.

So overall I was pretty impressed with the steel capabilities of the 851. Video, though, was not very much of a close story again. We look at these video samples side by side. Even if I don't tell you which ones on screen, you can tell that one looks clearly better than the other. On a still standpoint.

These phones compare very favorably. If you want the best most versatile sensor, then it's still the iPhone S II. If you want a camera system that can take pictures of various lending, the name 51 is perfect. Video tells a very different story, though, with these two phones, so I think it serves, plays to Apple software prowess. They can do my offer that stabilized 4k 60 now that might not be an issue for you- maybe take it down at 1080, and they're pretty much on par.

But for me, though, both of these based on Stills and video I'm, giving the edge to the iPhone, so I want to stop for a minute. I know a lot of people. Your work life has changed, you're working from home right now, if you're fortunate enough to still have a job and that's kind of where we found ourselves, usually when we're filming these videos, I've got two editors and producer here, but now I'm, filming myself, and we had a redo our entire workflow for the business with everybody working remotely and to sort of best serve and keep us organized. We found Monday calm so having something like this that lets us collaborate lets us keep track of projects assigned projects. Outs can be shared with everybody across the calendars has been really helpful to keep track of.

So a couple cool things about Monday: first, there's an app for pretty much every platform, there's also a ton of integration features with Monday with hundreds of services, things you're, probably using all the time, Google, Drive slack and a ton more, so obviously we're using this for video production, but I think one of the nice things about Monday's. It can adapt to pretty much any industry that you are in whether you've got a project. Your main trying to manage, or people who are trying to manage Monday can adapt to you instead of you having to adapt to the software. So if this sounds like something that you would want to check out, that might help you or your business will link to it down below. Well.

Camera is a huge determining factor in which phone to get for me display is the most important category. It's the portal to pretty much everything that this phone can do. If it's not a good enough display, it can sour the phone for me. So, let's start with the iPhone SE, it's a 4.7 inch LCD panel, and technically it's 750 peel, though that's not really a standard. The actual resolution is 1334 by 750, and it still gets plenty bright.

No issues with outdoor visibility, the colors look really bright and vibrant. This is a very, very good LCD panel. Now there are times when things can look a little, let's say chunky, but that is very rare to find and again at this price point, that display is not only acceptable. It's on the better side of good but sort of coming back to design. It's got them big old bezels on the top and bottom, and it's hard to ignore when you look at it next to DA 51, and you look at that phone, just the screen on sitting on a table, it's hard not to think that you're looking at a flagship phone, so it's 6.5 inches it's FEB plus, so it's 1080 by 2400 and everything about it. Look some version of good no issues with brightness at blacks.

Of course, look super black colors look bright and vibrant. There isn't a crazy high refresh right here at 60 Hertz, just like on the iPhone SE, but this is a beautiful display. This looks and feels like a premium display, and this is probably the biggest area of difference between these two phones. That's how good a display is on the Samsung.851 performance is something that generally, we don't talk about too much on flagship phones, I, think it's important to talk about on the lower end phones. These aren't always known for being performance powerhouses.

So, on the iPhone side, we've got the 13, my ionic and the Samsung side. We have the Enos 96 11, so before I get there. Let's talk about the 13. If you haven't heard it enough, here's a reminder: it's the same processor, that's in the iPhone 11 Pro, the 11pro Macs multitasking apps games, whatever you are doing, is going to be just as fast on the SD at least to me as it appears to be on the 11pro and while performance on the SE hauled through everything. There was necessarily the case here with the a51.

If I had a lot of apps open, I did start to experience. Some navigation stutters now wasn't anything that I couldn't get through easily, but it was something I'm not used to seeing on sort of any phone that I've tested recently so, and don't take any of that to mean that this is a slow phone with even the most basic app management. You won't notice any sort of stutter or slowdown and I probably do a lot more granular testing, the average user would who's. You know, checking Twitter, Facebook and Instagram throughout the day, but just know if you don't do any management, you just try to use the phone and open up whatever you're, gonna, open up and hope it's going to work. Fine.

Furthermore, you will start to notice some sort of sluggishness and sometimes some slowdown of apps and so battery life has turned into kind of the Achilles heel of the iPhone SD. It's got a relatively anemic about 1800 HP a million power battery 851, certainly a little bigger a little. Thicker more room almost doubles that to around 4,000 lab hours, but we want to sort of give these to equal options, equal opportunities to see how he performs here's, what we did charge them up to a hundred percent both had cellular networks connected all other apps were closed connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and we watched back a lot of hours of our own videos on YouTube and what we ended up saying. These results pretty much mimic the million power size, the iPhone SE was dead. It could put after six hours, whereas the 851 went for twelve.

Now in real-world usage, you're, probably not going to sit there and watch our videos for six to twelve hours, though I certainly hope you do, but it does tell a story of how much better battery life is on the 51 than the iPhone SE and the iPhone SE. It's again thin and light. It's still a day phone for most usage, but it is definitely not a day plus, whereas a 51, you can very easily get through a full day. Furthermore, it might even be a day-and-a-half phone to say this. You would have to think about battery with the 851 if you plug it in at night with the iPhone SE, or you want to keep an eye on the upper right-hand corner when it gets to be the end of the day.

Okay, so that's the key things. These phones there's a lot of like little stuff, the intangibles that make these phones unique, like the biometrics, how you get into your phone, the iPhone SE, it's tried-and-true, it works, it's touch ID, but it's fast, it's accurate, and it works pretty much every time, even with me, who has sometimes very weird thumbprints. Evidently, this phone unlocked almost every single time without issue on the 8051 side or something kind of different I. Think more flag should be you've, got an in screen finger Parader, and it's an optical version. It wasn't quite as accurate for me as it was on touch ID, but it did mean I got a better, looking phone it and have those giant bezels on the top and bottom and software is always a tricky one, because I feel like it boils down to like what OS do you like.

So if the iPhone SE you're getting the latest version of iOS right now, as this filming its iOS 13, with around 4 to 5 years of software update. So if we're on 13 now, you should get support for up to iOS 18, which seems very, very far away. So on the Samsung side, you're getting Android 10, and we asked same thing on the phone. How many years you're going to support this, and they said they will guarantee two years of software update so from Android 10 to whatever Android 12 ends up being called, and you should also get software and security updates for at least three years after that, and those should come at the very least quarterly. So you're getting more regular updates for longer on the iPhone side, but you're still getting a lot of updates, supports on the Android side as I sort of get to the conclusion here, if, like there's, almost two questions that need to be answered, which is the better phone to buy today and which is going to be the better phone in two or three years, and if you want to get a phone that you're only going to keep for a year, and you want to spend $400, then either of these are going to give you incredible options.

I'd probably say the 851 is a better option to go with you're getting more flagship premium. Let's say features that you get on the higher cost phones if you're going to keep a phone for three or four years at this price points very clearly, the better way to go is going to be the iPhone SE. If I'm already experiencing some software lag and slow down now, but time I get to Android 11 later on this year or Android 12 next year. Presumably, that's going to be exacerbated on the iPhone side, the Apple reliability, an Apple software update, something that's really important, even for those that are OS-agnostic and don't care what operating system, knowing your phone will be supported for four to five years. They giant peace of mind and I would wager that the iPhone SE will perform faster in four years than the a51 will in four years.

So here's the question for you. If you want the best phone for right now, and you're gonna, upgrade in a year check out the 851 I think you're going to love it. If you want to keep your phone for longer than a year, you just don't know how long you're going to keep it for your best bet. It's going to be to go to apple. com order yourself, an iPhone SE.

That was a long one. If you've been watching that video wondering what the shirt says here, 2020 dumpster fire hasn't been the best year, and you want to pick one up for yourself. We made them because I wanted to share how I feel about 2020. So if you want to pick one up, well we'll link to it down below.

Source : Jon Rettinger